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April 29, 2011

Considering Atlas Shrugged on Film

This piece was originally written for the Breakpoint blog. Crossposted with their permission.

Christians have a deep ambivalence about Ayn Rand that probably draws as deeply from the facts of her biography as from her famous novels. When the refugee from the old Soviet Union met the Catholic William F. Buckley, she said, "You are too intelligent to believe in God." Her atheism was militant. Rand's holy symbol was the dollar sign. Ultimately, Buckley gave Whittaker Chambers the job of writing the National Review essay on Rand's famous novel Atlas Shruggedthat effectively read her and the Objectivists out of the conservative movement. The review characterized Rand’s message as, "To a gas chamber, go!" Chambers thought Rand's philosophy led to the extinction of the less fit.

In truth, the great Chambers (his Witnessis one of the five finest books I've ever read) probably treated Rand's work unfairly. Though Rand certainly made no secret of her contempt for those unable or unwilling to engage in true exchange of economic value, she was right to tell interviewers that she was no totalitarian because of her abhorrence for the use of force. She did not believe in compulsion. Instead, she wanted a world in which a man stood or fell on his productivity. Rand saw production as the one great life affirming activity. Man does not automatically or instinctively derive his sustenance from the earth. He must labor and produce. This was Rand's bedrock and explains why she had such contempt for those who try to gain wealth through political arrangements. She saw this parasitism on every point of the economic spectrum from the beggar to the bureaucrat to the purveyor of crony corporatism.

The critical tension between Rand and Christian theology is on human worth. Christians affirm the inherent and very high value of individuals because of their creation in the image of God. Rand values human beings only for their achievements. A person who does not offer value is a leech, a “second rater.”

Atlas Shrugged, the film, is well worth seeing, both because of the challenge posed by Rand’s worldview and because it avoids the pedantic speech-making of the overly long novel. Rand doesn’t trust her story to get her philosophy across. The novel struggles under the weight of her desire to teach. Thanks to the constraints of the film medium, we learn through the development of the characters and the plot. As a result, the tale comes through quite clearly and simply.

The story proceeds from a fascinating premise: what if the most able were to go on strike and take their gifts away from the broader society (like Lebron taking his from Cleveland!)? These talented individuals stop producing because society (in the form of government) has begun to take their contribution for granted and seeks to control the conditions under which they live, work, and create.

Government action occurs under the rubric of equity, but these people who “move the world” -- as one conversation in the film expresses -- do not understand what claim the government has to order their lives or to confiscate the fruits of their labor. The villains of the piece are not so much any welfare class as much as corporatists who want to link their companies to government arrangements so as to assure profit without the need for strong performance. They go on about loyalty and public service, but it is a mask for mediocrity and greed. The heroes (Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggert) want to make money, but they are virtuous because they give obvious value for every cent they earn.

The underlying moral is that we must not make too great a claim to control the inventors and entrepreneurs lest we frustrate them into inactivity. Though we think we gain by taxing and regulating their efforts, there is a strong possibility that we will lose a great deal more by blocking the creative impulse and inspiring a parasitic ethic of entitlement.

Rand’s atheism, materialism, and reduction of the human being’s value to economic productivity are all severely problematic for a variety of good reasons. But one might compare her political and economic thought to chemotherapy, which is basically a form of poison designed to achieve a positive outcome. You don’t want to take it if you can avoid it. You hope the circumstances in which you would use it don’t arise. However, in an age of statism, it is a message that may need to be heard. Not so much in the hopes that it will prevail as much as to see it arrest movement in a particular direction which will end badly if it continues.

17 Comments

This is, on the whole, a fair assessment of Rand's thought. I only have two real quibbles:

1. Rand's "contempt for those unable or unwilling to engage in true exchange of economic value" is somewhat qualified. It is true that she did not prefer to talk about acutal disabilities, and some of the things she did say on the subject were somewhat dismissive. However, she does say, in Atlas Shrugged and elsewhere, that those who do cannot contribute are still able to offer gratitude to those who produce and that is often seen as sufficient payment. Eddy Willers is one such character and, though he comes to a tragic end, he remains a sympathetic character throughout the novel. Another such character is the "Wet Nurse" who has a sort of death-bed conversion to rationality and earns compassion from Hank Rearden. These characters still do not address the sort of moral dilemmas that often arise in discussions of abortion and euthanasia, and I think Rand did not do a good job of assessing the value of such persons. But the fact is that most of her writing focuses on condeming the ingratitude of the dependent and the envy of the unvirtuous, which is, as far as it goes, is perfectly consistent with Christian moral theology.

2. It is not entirely fair to call Rand a materialist because she did believe in the objective existence of the soul and of "spiritual" values such as justice, rationality, beauty, and the like. It is true that her view was that the soul was as an epiphenomenon of matter, which would put her at odds with most Christians, but that is not the same as materialism. The name of her philosophy, Objectivism, is specifically a response to those who claim that moral and esthetic values are illusionary or subjective because they arise from nature.

This latter point is particularly important to me because I owe my conversion to Christianity, in part, to Rand's arguments for the objectivity of morality. I grew up, as many children of the 60s and 70s on a steady diet of what is now called "New Age" spirituality and came to see it as a lot of sentimental nonsense: wishful thinking at best, stultifying anti-intellectualism at worst (and most often). This led me to think of myself as an atheist in a more-or-less Nietschean strain. It was Rand -- having worked through and rejected Nietsche, herself -- who first convinced me that the spiritual world of which I was suspicious was real and made real moral demands. This left me completely vulnerable, a few years later, to Lewis' argument in the first section of Mere Christianity. As I like to say, Rand taught me how to think and C. S. Lewis gave me something to think about.

This Christian doesn't have a deep ambivalence about Ayn Rand. I consider her a repulsive idiot who propounded a thoroughly Satanic philosophy. No ambivalence.

I'm glad R.C. Smith could come to Christ partly due to reading her. God can use anything to work His will, after all.

But she would be the first to tell you that she was completely opposed to Christianity. I'd also say that one of the reasons why conservatism as a political movement has so thoroughly failed in America is because of her pernicious influence on it.

In a newspaper column a couple of weeks ago on this topic, I compared Rand to a doctor who correctly diagnoses a disease -- rampant statism in all its pernicious forms, from socialism to Marxism -- and then prescribes the wrong treatment. Rampant individualism exalts the value of the individual, true enough, but Christianity teaches that value comes from being made in the image of God. We of and by ourselves and in our own power and ability are utterly lost, deserving only Hell. Without dying to self and rising again in the death and resurrection of Christ, we have no hope. Rand is a secular Pelagian. Her words have value as they point us away from considering the state as a savior, but when we face around in the direction she would have us go, it is just as dark at the end of her tunnel as it is at the end of Karl Marx's.

In a newspaper column a couple of weeks ago on this topic, I compared Rand to a doctor who correctly diagnoses a disease -- rampant statism in all its pernicious forms, from socialism to Marxism -- and then prescribes the wrong treatment.

Interestingly, I feel pretty much exactly the same way about Marx. I think he diagnosed the problems with our form of state-run capitalism quite well, but proposed very wrong solutions due to his materialist anthropology.

Perhaps the Christian world is divided between those who see Rand as their favorite raving anti-Christian political philosopher, and those who see Marx as their favorite raving anti-Christian political philosopher? :)

Marx and Rand were both nilhist in their perspectives. Nilhism is instructive in the sense that it shows exactly what not to do if one wishes salvation. It is also surprisingly seductive as it lures us into the dark promise of nothingness and oblivion.

Even when they are 'right' they are wrong because as T.S Eliot had Thomas Becket say of martyrdom: "To do the right deed for the wrong reason is surely the greatest treason"

Marx offers the tryanny and the idolatry of the state; Rand offers the tryanny and the idolatry of the individual. Both destroy genuine personhood.

A Christian is free to stand against Marx, Rand and any other imposter precisely because a Christian is both a unique image of God AND the inheritor of and participant in the community of Christ: the Apostolic teaching that is continually enlivened by the Holy Spirit. The Christian is free to the extent that he is able to worship the Creator more than the created thing while remaining thankful for the bounty of creation that God has given us.

Both Marx and Rand would bind us inexorably to the worship of the created thing and crush any sense of the sacred, the knowledge of God with us. Therefore they both must be wholly and absolutely rejected. Any 'fascination' we have with either is there simply because of our own temptation toward worshiping the created thing. We are tempted to the belief that God, if He exists, is somewhere else and we are autonomous.

"Submit yourself all ye nations, for God is with us!"

Christ is risen from the dead and upon all those in the tombs bestowing life!

Indeed, Mr. Bauman. Perhaps Rand is even more dangerous than Marx; while both Marx and Rand's universe is dull and empty, at least Marx recognizes the inherent value of community over the self. The fact that Rand's characters use "loyalty and public service" as "a mask for mediocrity and greed" is more than a little telling. Ultimately, Rand's ideologically committed capitalism leaves the individual no more free than the Marxist state.

"Though Rand certainly made no secret of her contempt for those unable or unwilling to engage in true exchange of economic value, she was right to tell interviewers that she was no totalitarian because of her abhorrence for the use of force. She did not believe in compulsion. Instead, she wanted a world in which a man stood or fell on his productivity."

Yes, but what Chambers saw, correctly in my opinion, is that Rand's ideas were perceived by her and others as so correct and logical that opposition to them could only arise from malice. Invincible ignorance could not possibly apply, therefore the logic would necessarily become tyrannical. And as the logic of the system goes, so goes the regime.

A totalitarian capitalist society would be no less dreadful than any other totalitarian society you'd care to mention.

I don't know if any of you are familiar with the video game Bioshock, but it provides an interesting take on objectivism. The premise of the game is that a secret underwater city has been established that runs on objectivist principles, but when the player arrives at the start of the game, the city has become a nightmare. The game paints a rather convincing picture of what the consequences of a city run along these lines might be: Bibles were banned because they were subversive to the principles the city was founded on ("No Gods or kings, only man" and similar slogans). Those who were less successful at business had no assistance, leaving them desperate for anyone who would help them, and so on. Without getting into the entire plot of the game, which is rather complicated, one man established a home for the poor, then turned those now-loyal poor into his own private army, and the founder of the city found himself being "out-competed," leading him to become tyrannical in an attempt to maintain the city as he wished it.
I find the whole scenario quite plausible as something objectivism is likely to lead to. After all, if there is truly no compulsion, what's to stop someone who is not an objectivist from gathering power, taking over, and overturning the objectivist society? Besides pretending altruism to gain support from the poor, the game presents the rebel as also using addictive genetic modification drugs that only he had a supply of to both bind people to him and make them stronger soldiers. In other words, he exploited both objectivism's permissiveness of innovative business and its prohibitions of altruism to undermine the system.

This post piqued my interest, and gave me something to think about as I went through my day.

I was struck by this line, "Rand values human beings only for their achievements." If a human being is "only" valuable for what he achieves, then apart from those achievements he has no value (which probably goes a long way in explaining why Rand endorsed abortion: "An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being." - emphasis in original.). [For more of Ayn Rand & abortion see Abortion Rights are Pro-Life and Ayn Rand quotes on abortion.]

From what I know of Rand's writing and the way she lived her philosophy, it would be more accurate to write, "Rand valued human beings as means to an end, not as ends in themselves." Nothing could be more antithetical to an orthodox Christian worldview. I no more accept a Christian patina on Rand's idea that persons are nothing more than means to an end than I accept a Christian patina on "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!"

When it comes to Ayn Rand, I'm more in the Whitaker Chambers camp than many today who promote her books as the antidote to what ails America. Another writer I would have liked to see take on Rand's work is the great G. K. Chesterton. For clarity's sake, consider me a Chestertonian rather than a Randian.

I still think her philosophy is less dangerous than Marx, if only because Marx is closer to a true perversion of the Christian faith than Objectivism. Marx appeals to our communitarian ideals, and warps them, while Rand appeals to our sense of individualism. But cummunity is a greater virtue in the Christian faith than individualism. I think what is truly evil in Rand's philosophy will be less attractive than the evil in Marx. It will be easier to sift our her chaff. many Christians may do it instinctively and unconsciously, whereas Christians who get sucked into Marx get dragged into the whole program more often.

But then, I have never read her works, and don't feel called to do so now. When I finish Plato and Kant, maybe.